jtnt://life/unedited

Let me preface this by saying that I am, generally, a fan of Zeldman. I love his book, and he has done much to make the world of the wide web better for web users (and developers, especially) now and in the future.

Also, let me say that I also know that my site sucks, and the navigation is among the worst of its problems. So, I also know bad design when I see it, even when I’m the designer.

So, all that said, Zeldman has finally lost it. Today he spends 350 words discussing the revamping of his so-called “Essentials” page. This is a page that contains select entries in his heretofore venerable weblog that are particularly useful, popular, or possibly ones that he just likes the best. He then points out that his chosen and lone access point to this page is a small “contextual” (Contextual? Really? Hardly.) text link at the bottom of the home page.

Let me see. Where do I begin?

He justifies not putting a new item in the main navigation for this page with “one more nav button would be one too many, and clutter does not promote clarity.” Agreed. However, does hiding what I would argue to be one of the more useful links on the entire site at the bottom of a sometimes very lengthy page promote clarity - or usability - or good sense in the slightest?

He continues. “Some links demand to live in primary navigation.” Like the one entitled “glam” that brings the user to his inexplicable ramblings? I, like most others, I would imagine, read zeldman.com to be wowed by great examples of design with web standards, to hear the latest news and happenings in the world of forward-thinking web design, and other related topics. How many people are “demanding” to read your idea of a good short story, Jeffrey? Check your stats. Tell me.

At the very least, a link to these “essentials” should be in his secondary navigation. However, this doesn’t make as much sense as putting it the main navigation, I would argue. To me this page certainly is more related to the overall subject matter of the site than the other links in the main navigation.

Speaking of which, the other two links in the main navigation — one a link to a promo page for his book, the other a link to archived web projects, the most recent one from the year 2000! — hardly “demand” to be included in the main navigation more than a link to “entries a few readers may value” — the Essentials page.

Where’s the logic? Where’s the user-focused design? Where has our Zeldman gone?!

I think you get my point. I am annoyed by what I see as an egregious oversight in site useability. Why would a designer confine access to the most valuable and useful posts on a weblog (if that’s what his site is) in a text link placed on a portion of a page a very small fraction of people are likely to find and an even smaller portion are likely to click on even if they do find it?

If this link is so unimportant as to not warrant a place in any navigation, why, pray tell, is it important enough to warrant an entire post? I guess without this post, no one would even know the link is even there, so at least the post about the link is useful even if the actual link itself is not.

Bill Bryson, in his excellent and thoroughly readable book A Short History of Nearly Everything (audio excerpt), writes that Isaac Newton “upon swinging his feet out of bed in the morning would reportedly sometimes sit for hours, immobilized by the sudden rush of thoughts to his head.”

Among other much more dramatic ways, I differ from Mr. Newton in that I will sometimes stay in bed in the morning indefinitely simply because I can’t think of anything else to do.

At this late stage in the unsuccessful process of trying to get my new graphics card to work, I can hardly stand to relive the last couple days. Suffice it to say that this happened, and I’m not really pleased with Megamacs.com. No link given, because you’re better off just staying away from them altogether.

I flicked the internet over on to that cnn.com site tonight and found a story about Spalding Gray being missing. This fact doesn’t really strike me at all. except to remind me that Spalding Grey was doing some one-man, audience-participation show in Prospect Park back when I lived in Brooklyn, and that I wished I had seen it.

The strangest thing in the article to me was that it states:

"She [Gray’s wife] said that Gray left with $120 in his pocket but was not carrying his wallet or credit cards."

I’m not married, so maybe I haven’t been let in on all the secrets, but is it common for your wife to know how much money you have on you when you leave the house? I can understand her knowing that he didn’t have his wallet and credit cards for she probably found those left at the house. But I can’t ever recall anyone knowing how much cash I happened to have on hand since my mother sent me off to elementary school with lunch money. Then again, I had somewhat sticky fingers when I was young, so she probably didn’t even know.

I now resign to always keep some odd amount of money on my person so no one, not even my wife (if I had one), ever really knows how much cheddar I’m holding.

I got a contract faxed to me today from MTV Networks stating they had used five of my photographs in the show.

There are a couple things I don’t like about the contract - which I don’t think jive with the original agreement - but the problem is that I can’t find the original agreement.

This is a piece of paper I know I’ve stumbled across six times since I received it. On that sixth time I probably thought to put it somewhere "where I’ll be able to find it easily later."

Where is that damn thing?